Prosecutors have filed charges against eight people in connection with a deadly nightclub fire in southern Brazil that killed 241 people earlier this year.
The Jan. 27 fire roared through the crowded, windowless Kiss nightclub in the city of Santa Maria, filling the air with flames and thick, toxic smoke.
Police have said the band performing at the club lit a flare, which ignited flammable soundproofing foam on the ceiling. That released a deadly combination of cyanide, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.
Prosecutor David Medina said in a Tuesday press conference that the two owners of the nightclub and two members of the band have been charged with murder.
Two others were charged with perjury and two with evidence tampering.
Police say they are seeking criminal charges against 16 people in connection with the nightclub fire that killed 241 people in southern Brazil earlier this year.
Inspector Marcelo Arigony said Friday that the mayor and fire chief of the city where the fire took place were also responsible for the tragedy because of the negligent safety inspections of the night club.
On Jan.27, fire roared through the crowded, windowless Kiss nightclub in the city of Santa Maria, filling the air with flames and thick, toxic smoke.
Arigony said the band performing at the club lit a flare, which ignited flammable soundproofing foam on the ceiling. The cyanide, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide released by the ensuing fire “was what killed the people inside.”
Chile is investigating the death of thousands of prawns that have washed ashore, covering a beach in red.
The dead shrimp appeared Wednesday in Coronel, some 330 miles (530 kilometers) south of the capital, Santiago.
Local fishermen accuse thermoelectric plants of heating the ocean waters.
They say the Bocamina 1 and 2 plants owned by Chilean power company Colbun and the Santa Maria plant controlled by regional power generator Endesa endanger their livelihood.
Hundreds of dead crabs also washed up in the same area on shore over the weekend.
Environmental police are collecting evidence in the area and will be interviewing local fishermen and residents.
Just over a week since a nightclub fire killed nearly 240 revelers in southern Brazil, Carnival festivities hit full stride Friday, raising questions about the safety of those who will pack party spaces across the nation.
In the days following the deadly blaze at the Kiss club in the university town of Santa Maria, authorities across Brazil increased fire inspections and closed dozens of clubs in many major cities, mostly citing problems with the establishments’ paperwork.
But most of the clubs have already reopened — leading fire experts to say few changes were put in place to really improve safety for patrons.
“Certainly for Carnival, we’ll still have many security problems in the clubs, because there is no possibility of having intense inspections in every corner of Brazil, and there was no time to have made necessary adaptations,” said Telmo Brentano, an engineering professor in Porto Alegre, capital of the state where the Jan. 27 Kiss club fire took place.
Brentano, an activist for the creation of federal laws on fire safety and author of two books about fire safety engineering, said something positive may come from the blaze that killed 238 people before Brazil hosts the world’s two biggest sporting events in the next three years.
“Things will certainly be better than they are today by the World Cup and the Olympics,” he said. “The shock of the Santa Maria tragedy was so intense that now patrons of public establishments are more aware of dangers they may face if minimum fire safety standards aren’t met. There really was a great awakening on the issue.”
City and state officials in Sao Paulo, Brazil‘s biggest city, and Rio de Janeiro, the center of Carnival where about 500,000 tourists are expected to visit through Wednesday, declined to comment on the specifics of increased fire safety inspections in the past week. Fire officials in Rio de Janeiro said only that their goal is to carry out 40,000 inspections in 2013.
But Brentano and other fire experts said more inspections will mean little because of Brazil‘s lack of consistent fire laws. Each state enacts its own laws and cities can create their own as well — and corruption at the state and local levels undermine the rules that do exist, the experts said.
State health officials say a 22-year-old man injured in last week’s deadly nightclub fire in southern Brazil has died.
The Rio Grande do Sul Health Secretariat says Bruno Portella Fricks died late Saturday from injuries he sustained in last Sunday’s blaze.
Fricks’ death brings to 237 the death toll from the fire at the Kiss nightclub in the college town of Santa Maria.
In its statement Sunday, the health secretariat said 101 people injured in the fire remain hospitalized.
Police say the fire likely started when a band set off flares, which ignited soundproofing foam on the ceiling. Police investigators have also said the club was lacking basic fire safety equipment, and a judge last week extended the temporary detentions of the club’s owners and two band members by 30 days.
Brazil says the U.S. government has donated medicine for survivors of last week’s deadly nightclub fire who are being treated for cyanide inhalation.
The Health Ministry says in a statement that 140 kits of hydroxocobalamin are scheduled to arrive later Saturday. The medicine is an injectable form of vitamin B12.
Cyanide was released by the burning insulating foam in the nightclub’s ceiling.
More than 230 people died in the Jan. 27 fire at the Kiss nightclub in the southern Brazilian city of Santa Maria. Most died from smoke inhalation.
Police have said the blaze likely started when a band performing at the club lit a flare, which ignited flammable soundproofing foam on the ceiling.
Brazilian authorities inspected and shuttered night spots around the country on Thursday as part of a crackdown on unsafe public spaces after a deadly nightclub fire left 235 people dead and shocked the nation.
The action comes just a week before annual Carnival celebrations start across the country, filling streets and venues with revelers.
Inspectors in the Amazon city of Manaus have ordered the temporary closure of some 58 bars, nightclubs and other public buildings there, the city’s Em Tempo newspaper reported. Owners of the affected night spots staged a protest Thursday outside City Hall to denounce what they said were arbitrary closures, the newspaper said.
It added that fire code irregularities have been found even inside Manaus City Hall, including faulty emergency lighting and nonfunctional fire extinguishers.
In Rio de Janeiro, officials said they were studying the possible closure of some of the dozens of cultural centers operated by state and local governments, including theaters, libraries and museums said to be operating with expired licenses. Nine out of 10 municipal theaters in Rio have expired fire inspection certificates, the O Globo daily reported on Thursday. It also said two nightclubs in the Rio neighborhood of Barra de Tijuca have been closed.
The legal status of the Kiss nightclub in the southern Brazilian city of Santa Maria has come under intense scrutiny since Sunday’s blaze, with firefighters and top officials insisting they had carried out inspections in accordance with the law. But the police inspector leading the investigation of the tragedy has said the club was so blatantly hazardous that “any child” could have seen it should not have been operating.
Police have said the blaze likely started when a band performing at the club lit a flare, which ignited flammable soundproofing foam on the ceiling. That initial error was compounded by the near-total lack of emergency infrastructure such as a fire alarms or sprinkler systems, police have said. The club also had only one working door and a faulty fire extinguisher.
Kiss’ co-owners and two members of the band performing when the fire started were detained earlier this week and are being held for five days as part of the police probe.
Jader Marques, an attorney representing one of the co-owners, insisted his “client’s responsibility is having trusted too much in the inspectors and in those responsible for the construction.”
“Hindsight is 20-20,” he said, while saying public officials had signed off on the club.
Marques denied reports that overcrowding helped compound Sunday’s tragedy, insisting there were only 600 to 700 people in the club at any one time. Capacity for the 615-square-meter (6,650-square-foot) nightspot stood at less than 700, though the band’s guitarist told media that the space was packed with an estimated 1,200 to 1,300 people. Police have given the same estimate.
Marques insisted that any higher tallies of people at the club that night were due to club-goers cycling in and out.
Since the tragedy, victim families and local townspeople have repeatedly called for those responsible to be punished. On Wednesday, a young tagger sprayed oversized white graffiti reading “justice for all” on the facade of the club as onlookers cheered and police watched from below, Brazilian media reported. He then escaped over neighboring roofs, the reports said.
More than 100 people remain hospitalized, dozens of them in critical condition.
The owner of a nightclub in southern Brazil where more than 230 people died in a fire last weekend deflected blame to “the whole country,” as well as to architects and inspectors charged with making sure the building was safe, his lawyer said Wednesday.
Attorney Jader Marques said his client, Elissandro Spohr, “regretted having ever been born” because of his grief over the fire, but still blamed Sunday’s tragedy on “a succession of errors made by the whole country.”
Police investigating the blaze have said it likely started when a country music band performing at the Kiss nightclub in the college town of Santa Maria lit a flare, which ignited flammable soundproofing foam on the ceiling. That initial error was compounded by the near-total lack of emergency infrastructure such as a fire alarms or sprinkler systems, police have said. The club also had only one working door and a faulty fire extinguisher.
Marques insisted in a phone interview with The Associated Press that “my client’s responsibility is having trusted too much in the inspectors and in those responsible for the construction.”
“Hindsight is 20-20,” he said, stressing that public officials had signed off on the club.
The number of injured jumped to 143 Wednesday after 22 people were admitted to hospitals with respiratory problems after having escaped the club apparently unharmed. Brazil Health Minister Alexandre Padilha has urged the fire’s survivors to remain alert for any symptoms of so-called “chemical pneumonia,” which can take up to three days to develop following exposure to toxic fumes and smoke.
The blaze also claimed another life late Tuesday, raising the death toll to 235, as a 21-year-old man with burns covering 70 percent of his body succumbed to his wounds. Brazilian media reported that the man’s brother was also killed in the fire.
Police detained Spohr, the club’s other co-owner and two musicians who were playing in the club when the fire broke out, and are holding them for five days as part of the investigation. Spohr is in police custody at a hospital in a nearby town, where he’s recovering from a respiratory infection and is said to be suffering from depression.
Lilian Caus, one of the officers watching Spohr, said he had made a suicidal gesture, removing a shower hose and tying it to a bathroom window Tuesday.
“By the way it was tied it looked like he wanted to use it to hang himself by the neck, but he didn’t even use it,” Caus said. “There seems to have been the intention to use it.”
Marques denied reports that overcrowding helped cause Sunday’s tragedy, insisting there were only 600 to 700 people in the club at any one time. Capacity for the 615-square-meter nightspot stood at less than 700, though the band’s guitarist told media that the space was packed with an estimated 1,200 to 1,300 people. Police have given the same estimate.
Marques insisted that any higher tallies of people at the club that night were due to club-goers cycling in and out.
The tragedy raised questions about the reliability of safety regulations in a nation set to host the World Cup and Olympic Games. Documents obtained by The Associated Press, including past building and fire safety plan permits issued to the club, showed that the single exit, the foam insulation and other contributors to the tragedy didn’t violate laws.
“Do I agree with the fact that there was only one exit? No,” said Maj. Gerson Pereira, an inspector with the local fire department. “Do I agree that the roof was covered with flammable material? No, I don’t. I would have liked to shut down this place, but then the firefighters could be sued” because no law had been broken.
The same documents show that other regulations were broken, including irregularities in the fire safety inspection of the club, as well as pyrotechnics used by the band that police say should not have been set off indoors. Police inspectors say any of the violations was reason enough to shut the club down.
One document shows the club had already been labeled by fire officials a “medium” risk for a fire. By state law, that designation requires the club undergo annual inspections, but records show that the last inspection took place in August 2011.
Survivors have said the club’s fire extinguishers failed to work in early attempts to battle the blaze. Under state law, an extinguisher must have a receipt showing that it had been independently inspected within a year.
Marcelo Arigony, the lead police investigator in the case, said Tuesday that it was clear the fire extinguishers had not been inspected and that they were clearly cheap models that should not be used anywhere.
“It’s not that this club was working to come within this or that law — the place should have never been open in the first place,” Arigony said. “This is a problem that is seen across Brazil, these laws. I can only hope this tragedy brings about change.”
Jaime Moncada, a U.S.-based fire-safety consultant with nearly three decades experience in Latin America including large projects in Brazil, said he was not surprised that one exit was permissible under local law.
Shown a blueprint of the club obtained by the AP, he calculated that the farthest point from the front door was 105 feet, and regulations in most Brazilian states dictate that a second exit is required only if the distance is 131 feet or more.
For the same reason of distance, Moncada said sprinklers and alarms would not be required.
“For an American audience, it is crazy to think that a place would have only one exit,” he said.
In Brazil, he added, that would be the norm.
Amid the shock of what was the world’s deadliest nightclub fire in a decade, changes in Brazil seemed on the horizon.
In Brasilia, the nation’s capital, lawmakers in the lower house worked on a proposal that would require federal safety minimum standards across Brazil. Now states individually create such laws. The newspaper O Globo reported on its website that the mayor’s office in Santa Maria ordered all nightclubs closed for 30 days while inspections are carried out.
Elsewhere, the government of the country’s biggest city, Sao Paulo, set to host the opening match of the 2014 World Cup, promised tougher security regulations for nightclubs.
Outraged citizens in Santa Maria are demanding change.
Elise Parode, an 18-year-old student taking part in a protest before City Hall, chanted with all her might along with about 500 others, pushing up against the door of the building as municipal guards kept them from entering.
“We want justice! We want the government held accountable, just like the owners of the bar!” she yelled as the crowd around held aloft poster-size photos of the fire’s victims. “Our own government doesn’t know the laws — we’re not safe until they do.”
Flammable and toxic foam soundproofing on the ceiling. Just one exit for a large club that could hold hundreds of people. Not a ceiling water sprinkler system in sight.
These are some of the main causes of the massive death toll in a nightclub fire in Brazil — and none broke any law, raising questions about safety regulations in a nation set to host the World Cup and Olympic Games.
Documents obtained by The Associated Press, including past building and fire safety plan permits issued to the Kiss club, where 234 people died within minutes in a fire early Sunday, showed that such deadly choices were within regulations.
“Do I agree with the fact that there was only one exit? No. Do I agree that the roof was covered with flammable material? No, I don’t,” said Maj. Gerson Pereira, an inspector with the local fire department. “I would have liked to shut down this place, but then the firefighters could be sued” because no law had been broken.
But the same documents also illustrate that other regulations were broken, including irregularities in the fire safety inspection of the club, as well as violations by the band the club hired whose pyrotechnics are blamed for causing the blaze. Police inspectors say any of these violations were reason enough to shut the club down.
One document shows that the club had already been labeled by fire officials as being at “medium” risk for having a fire. By state law, that designation requires that the club undergo annual inspections. But records show that the last inspection took place in August 2011.
Survivors of the fire have said that the club’s fire extinguishers failed to work in early attempts to battle the blaze. Under state law, an extinguisher must have a receipt showing that it had been independently inspected within a year in order for it to be acceptable.
Marcelo Arigony, the lead police investigator in the case, said in a Tuesday press conference that it was clear the fire extinguishers had not been inspected and that they were clearly cheap models that should not be used anywhere.
Perhaps most egregious was what authorities point to as the cause of the fire.
The blaze began at around 2:30 a.m. local time during a performance by Gurizada Fandangueira, a country music band that had made the use of pyrotechnics a trademark of their shows. The band’s guitarist told media that the 615-square-meter (6,650-square-foot) club was packed with an estimated 1,200 to 1,300 people, the same estimate police have given. Capacity for the club, however, is under 700.
Police said that members of the band knowingly bought flares meant for outdoor use because they cost a mere $1.25 a piece, compared with the $35 price tag for an indoor flare.
“It’s not that this club was working to come within this or that law — the place should have never been open in the first place,” Arigony said. “This is a problem that is seen across Brazil, these laws. I can only hope this tragedy brings about change.”
Jaime Moncada, a U.S.-based fire-safety consultant with nearly three decades experience in Latin America including large projects in Brazil, said he was not surprised that one exit was permissible under local law.
Shown a blueprint of the club obtained by the AP, he calculated that the farthest point from the front door was 105 feet (32 meters), and regulations in most Brazilian states dictate that a second exit is required only if the distance is 131 feet (40 meters) or more.
For the same reason of distance, Moncada said sprinklers and alarms would not be required.
“For an American audience, it is crazy to think that a place would have only one exit,” he said.
In Brazil, he added, that would be the norm.
In the United States, the club would have failed an inspection in at least three ways, according to Moncada: Three separate exits would have been required; the foam would need to be treated with a fire retardant; and it would need sprinklers.
Amid the shock of what was the world’s deadliest nightclub fire in a decade, changes in Brazil seemed on the horizon.
In Brasilia, the nation’s capital, lawmakers in the lower house worked on a proposal that would require federal safety minimum standards across Brazil. Now states individually create such laws. The O Globo newspaper reported on its website that the mayor’s office in Santa Maria ordered all nightclubs closed for 30 days while inspections are carried out.
Elsewhere, the government of the country’s biggest city, Sao Paulo, set to host the opening match of the 2014 World Cup, promised tougher security regulations for nightclubs.
The Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported that in Manaus, which will also host World Cup matches, nightclubs with empty fire extinguishers and unmarked emergency exits have been shut down and fined. And in Olympic host city, Rio de Janeiro, a consumer complaint hotline has received more than 60 calls since Sunday’s tragedy denouncing hazardous conditions at night spots, theaters, supermarkets, schools, hospitals and shopping malls.
Outraged citizens in Santa Maria are demanding change.
Elise Parode, an 18-year-old student taking part in a protest before City Hall, chanted with all her might along with about 500 others, pushing up against the door of the building as municipal guards kept them from entering.
“We want justice! We want the government held accountable, just like the owners of the bar!” she yelled as the crowd around held aloft poster-size photos of the fire’s victims. “Our own government doesn’t know the laws — we’re not safe until they do.”
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Associated Press writers Bradley Brooks in Santa Maria and Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
There was no alarm, no extinguishers, no sprinklers and almost no escape from the nightclub that became a death trap for more than 200 Brazilian college students.
As investigators began poking through the rubble and families mourned their dead, questions abounded as the university city in southern Brazil tried to understand how the Sunday morning blaze that killed 231 people could have been sparked in the first place, then rage rapidly out of control.
Why was there only one door available for exit and entry? What was the flammable material in the ceiling that allowed the conflagration to move so quickly? And, more pointedly, why was a band playing at the club allowed to use pyrotechnics inside the building?
Police were leaning toward the band’s pyrotechnics as the cause of the blaze during a party at the Kiss nightclub organized by several academic departments at the Federal University of Santa Maria. Inspector Antonio Firmino, who’s part of the team investigating the fire, said it appeared the club’s ceiling was covered with an insulating foam made from a combustible material that ignited with the pyrotechnics.
Firmino said the number and state of the exits is under investigation but that it appeared that a second door was “inadequate,” as it was small and protected by bars that wouldn’t open.
The disaster, the worst fire of its kind in more than a decade, also raises questions of whether Brazilian authorities are up to the task of ensuring safety in such venues ahead of it hosting next year’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.
Some critics have said conditions in many Brazilian bars and clubs are ripe for another deadly blaze. They say that in addition to modernizing sometimes outdated safety codes and ensuring sufficient inspectors, people must change their way of thinking and respect safety regulations.
Hundreds of people marched peacefully outside the nightclub Monday night to remember the victims, and demand justice. Some carried signs with slogans such as, “May God’s justice be carried out.”
“We hope that the justice system, through its competent mechanisms, succeeds in clarifying to the public what happened, and gives the people an explanation,” said marcher Eglon Do Canto.
Brazilian police said they detained three people Monday in connection with the blaze, while the newspaper O Globo said on its website that a fourth person had surrendered to police. Police Inspector Ranolfo Vieira Junior said the detentions were part of the ongoing police probe and those detained can be held for up to five days.
Vieira declined to identify those detained, but local media has identified them as two co-owners of the club, and two members of the band that was using a spark machine inside the building when the fire erupted.
According to state safety codes here, clubs should have one fire extinguisher every 1,500 square feet as well as multiple emergency exits. Limits on the number of people admitted are to be strictly respected. None of that appears to have happened at the Santa Maria nightclub.
“A problem in Brazil is that there is no control of how many people are admitted in a building,” said Joao Daniel Nunes, a civil engineer in nearby Porto Alegre. “They never are clearly stated, and nobody controls how many people enter these night clubs.”
Rodrigo Martins, a guitarist for the group Gurizada Fandangueira, told Globo TV network in an interview Monday that the flames broke out minutes after the employment of a pyrotechnic machine that fans out colored sparks, at around 2:30 a.m. local time.
“I felt that something was falling from the roof and I looked up and I saw the fire was spreading, and I shouted ‘Look, it’s catching on fire, man, it’s catching fire,'” Martins said. “Then the drummer tried to throw water on it, and it looked like the fire spread more then. Then the security guards came with an extinguisher, tried to use it, but it didn’t work.”
He added that the club was packed and estimated the crowd at about 1,200-1,300 people.
“I thought I was going to die there. There was nothing I could do, with the fire spreading and people screaming in front.”
Standing next to the stage when the fire broke out, Rodrigo Rizzi, a first-year nursing student, watched the tragedy unfold.
“I was right there, so even though I was far from the door, at least I realized something was wrong,” he said. “Others, who couldn’t see the stage, never had a chance. They never saw it coming.”
As he headed toward the door, the air turned dense and dark with smoke; there was no light, nothing pointing to the single exit. Rizzi found himself clawing through a panicked crowd that surged blindly toward the door.
“I was halfway across the floor, I could see the door, but the air turned black with this thick smoke,” he said. “I couldn’t breathe. People started to panic and run toward the door. They were falling, screaming, pulling at each other.”
Witnesses said security guards who didn’t know about the blaze initially blocked people from leaving without paying their bills. Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of the night before they’re allowed to leave.
Inside the club, metal barriers meant to organize the lines of people entering and leaving became traps, corralling desperate patrons within yards of the exit. Bodies piled up against the grates, smothered and broken by the crushing mob.
About 50 of the victims were found in the club’s two bathrooms, where the blinding smoke caused them to believe the doors were exits.
Martins confirmed that the group’s accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other band members made it out safely. Martins said he thought Jacques made it out of the building and later returned to save his accordion.
The first funeral services were held Monday for the victims, including brothers Pedro and Mercello Salle. Most of the dead were college students 18 to 21 years old, but they also included some minors. Almost all died from smoke inhalation rather than burns.
National Health Minister Alexandre Padilha cautioned that the death toll could worsen dramatically, telling news media in Santa Maria on Monday that 75 of those injured were in critical condition and could die.
Santa Maria Mayor Cezar Schirmer declared a 30-day mourning period, and Tarso Genro, the governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, said officials were investigating the cause of the disaster.
The blaze was the deadliest in Brazil since at least 1961, when a fire that swept through a circus killed 503 people in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro.
Sunday’s fire also appeared to be the worst at a nightclub anywhere in the world since December 2000, when a welding accident reportedly set off a fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309 people.
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Associated Press writers Marco Sibaja contributed to this report from Brasilia, Brazil, Stan Lehman and Bradley Brooks contributed from Sao Paulo and Jenny Barchfield contributed from Rio de Janeiro.
The nightclub Kiss was hot, steamy from the press of beer-fueled bodies dancing close. The Brazilian country band on stage was whipping the young crowd into a frenzy, launching into another fast-paced, accordion-driven tune and lighting flares that spewed silver sparks into the air.
It was another Saturday night in Santa Maria, a university town of about 260,000 on Brazil‘s southernmost tip.
Then, in the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, it turned into a scene of indescribable horror as sparks lit a fire in the soundproofing material above the stage, churning out black, toxic smoke as flames raced through the former beer warehouse, killing 231 people.
“I was right there, so even though I was far from the door, at least I realized something was wrong,” said Rodrigo Rizzi, a first-year nursing student who was next to the stage when the fire broke out and watched the tragedy unfold, horror-stricken and helpless.
“Others, who couldn’t see the stage, never had a chance. They never saw it coming.”
There was no fire alarm, no sprinklers, no fire escape. In violation of state safety codes, fire extinguishers were not spaced every 1,500 square feet, and there was only one exit. As the city buried its young Monday, questions were raised about whether Brazil is up to the task of ensuring the safety in venues for the World Cup next year, and the Olympics in 2016. Four people were detained for questioning, including two band members and the nightclub’s two co-owners.
Rizzi hadn’t even planned on going out that night. He was talked into it by friends and knew dozens at the club, which was packed with an estimated 1,200 to 1,300 people. He said the first sign of a problem was insulation dripping above the stage.
The flames at that point were barely noticeable, just tiny tongues lapping at the flammable material. The band’s singer, Marcelo dos Santos, noticed it and tried to put out the smoldering embers by squirting water from a bottle.
The show kept going. Then, as the ceiling continued to ooze hot molten foam, dos Santos grabbed the drummer’s water bottle and aimed it at the fire. That didn’t work either, Rizzi said. A security guard handed the band leader a fire extinguisher. He aimed, but nothing came out; the extinguisher didn’t work.
At that point, Rizzi said, the singer motioned to the band to get out. Rizzi calmly made his way to the door — the club’s only exit — still thinking it was a small fire that would quickly be controlled.
The cavernous building was divided into several sections, including a pub and a VIP lounge — and hundreds of the college students and teenagers crammed in couldn’t see the stage. They continued to drink and dance, unaware of the danger spreading above them.
Then, the place became an inferno.
The band members who headed straight for the door lived. One, Danilo Brauner, went back to get his accordion, and never made it out.
The air turned dense and dark with smoke; there was no light, nothing pointing to the single exit. Rizzi found himself clawing through a panicked crowd that surged blindly toward the door.
“I was halfway across the floor, I could see the door, but the air turned black with this thick smoke,” he said. “I couldn’t breathe. People started to panic and run toward the door. They were falling, screaming, pulling at each other.”
The manager, meanwhile, was outside dealing with a drunk and belligerent young man. No one there had any inkling of the desperate scene unfolding just beyond Kiss’ black, sound-proof double doors, said taxi driver Edson Schifelbain, who was in his car, waiting for passengers.
A security guard poked his head out and said there was a fight. A fraction of a second later, someone inside yelled “Fire!” The manager opened the doors and it was like opening the gates of hell, Schifelbain said.
Young men and women, mouths and eyes blackened with soot, clothes tattered, tumbled out screaming and crying. Some ran right over his taxi and two other cabs parked nearby, breaking mirrors, windshields, bashing in the doors. Horrified, he realized his cab was in their way, but couldn’t move it because there were bodies hunched over it, collapsed in front of the tires, everywhere.
“The horror I saw in their faces, the terror, I’ll never forget,” he said. Two girls gasping for air climbed into his car, and as soon as he was able, he sped the six miles (10 kilometers) to the university hospital.
“One of them was crying all the way, screaming, ‘My friend is dying,'” he said. “I did what I could. I don’t know what happened to those girls.”
Inside the club, metal barriers meant to organize the lines of people entering and leaving became traps, corralling desperate patrons within yards of the exit. Bodies piled up against the grates, smothered and broken by the crushing mob.
Rizzi was stuck, unable to move, taking in gulps of smoke, feeling the gaseous mix burn his lungs.
He was within seconds of passing out, he said, when the whole frenzied mass suddenly lurched forward. The gates gave way, and everyone toppled over. Rizzi was lying on top of two or three people, several more heaped on top of him. He stuck out his hands, smacking them against the sidewalk and door. Someone pulled him to safety.
“To get out, I climbed, I pulled people’s hair. I felt other people grabbing me, hitting me in the face,” he said. “It’s hard to describe the horror. But once I was outside, I recovered, and started pulling out the others.”
Soon, he said, the street was a sea of bodies.
This was the scene 24-year-old Gabriel Barcellos Disconzi found when he arrived about 3:30 a.m., an hour after fire broke out. Wakened by a phone call from friends, the club regular immediately started pulling out bodies as smoke spewed so thick that entering the building was unthinkable.
Using sledgehammers and picks and their bare hands, he and other young men broke down the walls. Born and bred in Santa Maria, the outgoing young lawyer had dozens of friends and acquaintances inside.
“It was all so fast, there was no time for anything, no time for crying over a friend,” he said. “It was dead people over here, living over there. Body after body after body.”
Both Rizzi and Disconzi were there when they broke into one of the bathrooms and found a tableau of nearly indescribable desperation: It was crammed with bodies, tangled and tossed like dolls, piled as high as Rizzi’s chest. In the darkness and confusion, concert-goers had rushed into the bathroom thinking it was an exit. They died, crushed and airless in the dark.
“I’ll never forget the wall of people,” Rizzi said.
Disconzi helped load them into a truck. Just the dead jammed into that bathroom filled an entire truck, he said.
By this time, the city was waking up to the dimension of the tragedy unfolding at its heart. Doctors, nurses and psychologists began arriving, giving immediate assistance — checking eyes and respiratory passages, stabilizing the burned, resuscitating those whose hearts had stopped or lungs had failed because of the smoke. The living they loaded into ambulances. The mounting number of dead went into trucks.
At Charity Hospital, the region’s largest, “it was a war scene,” said Dr. Ronald Bossemeyer, the technical director.
“Trying to give care, comfort the living, and keep family members who started to arrive from overwhelming everything — it was madness,” he said, choking back tears. “The wounded, the doctors, people running with saline, with oxygen. We’ve never seen so many patients.”
As families waited, nurses and technicians ran back and forth, bringing an earring, a shoe, a wallet, anything that could help identify those still living, Bossemeyer said.
As doctors were at work saving those who could be saved, a group of mothers was calling around to check on one another. Elaine Marques Goncalves woke up to that terrible question: Do you know where your child is?
With a jolt, she realized two of her sons, Gustavo and Deivis, had not come home the night before.
“I knew they’d gone to a club, but I didn’t know which one,” she said. Trying to keep calm, she joined the multitude pressing for news outside the hospital.
Hours later, she got some good news: Gustavo had burns on 20 percent of his body and had suffered two heart attacks as his lungs failed to draw oxygen, but he was alive and being flown to the state capital, Porto Alegre, for treatment.
“I had time to put my hands on him and say, ‘My dear, your mother is here with you,'” she said. “He was sedated, but I know he could hear. Then I had to tear myself away and go find my other son.”
Hours passed as the dead piled up in the city gym. It took an entire day of anguish before she learned what she’d dreaded most: Deivis was dead.
As he lay there among basketball hoops and water coolers, one body among so many, she asked the questions on everyone’s mind.
“How can a club just burn like that? People have to know what happened here,” she said. “It won’t bring back my son, but I have to ask. This nightclub was beyond capacity. The whole world has to know. Why couldn’t they get out?”
By Kevin SpakPolice have arrested three people in connection with the fire that killed more than 230 nightclub-goers in Santa Maria, Brazil, yesterday: One of the club’s co-owners, its chief of security, and a member of the band Gurizada Fandangueira, the BBC reports. Police are reportedly seeking another club co-owner as well…. Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
Brazilian police say they’ve made three arrests and are seeking a fourth person in connection with a nightclub fire that killed more than 230 people.
Inspector Ranolfo Vieira Junior said at a Monday press conference that the arrests are for investigative purposes. He says the detentions have five-day limits.
He declined to identify those arrested or the fourth person sought.
More than 230 people died early Sunday during the fire at a university party in southern Brazil. Police have said they think a band’s pyrotechnics show ignited sound insulation on the ceiling, causing the blaze.
The Zero Hora newspaper quotes lawyer Jader Marques as saying his client Elissandro Spohr, a co-owner of the club, was arrested. The paper also says two band members were arrested.
Funerals began Monday in the city of Santa Maria, Brazil, where the blaze took place.
The bodies of the young college students were found piled up just inside the entrance of the Kiss nightclub, among more than 230 people who died in a cloud of toxic smoke after a blaze enveloped the crowded locale within seconds and set off a panic.
Hours later, the horrific chaos had transformed into a scene of tragic order, with row upon row of polished caskets of the dead lined up in the community gymnasium in the university city of Santa Maria. Many of the victims were under 20 years old, including some minors.
As the city in southern Brazil prepared to bury the 233 people killed in the conflagration caused by a band’s pyrotechnic display, an early investigation into the tragedy revealed that security guards briefly prevented partygoers from leaving through the sole exit. And the bodies later heaped inside that doorway slowed firefighters trying to get in.
“It was terrible inside — it was like one of those films of the Holocaust, bodies piled atop one another,” said police inspector Sandro Meinerz. “We had to use trucks to remove them. It took about six hours to take the bodies away.”
Survivors and another police inspector, Marcelo Arigony, said security guards briefly tried to block people from exiting the club. Brazilian bars routinely make patrons pay their entire tab at the end of the night before they are allowed to leave.
“It was chaotic and it doesn’t seem to have been done in bad faith because several security guards also died,” he told The Associated Press.
Later, firefighters responding to the blaze initially had trouble entering the club because “there was a barrier of bodies blocking the entrance,” Guido Pedroso Melo, commander of the city’s fire department, told the O Globo newspaper.
Police inspectors said they think the source of the blaze was a band’s small pyrotechnics show. The fire broke out sometime before 3 a.m. Sunday and the fast-moving fire and toxic smoke created by burning foam sound insulation material on the ceiling engulfed the club within seconds.
Authorities said band members who were on the stage when the fire broke out later talked with police and confirmed they used pyrotechnics during their show.
Meinerz, who coordinated the investigation at the nightclub, said one band member died after escaping because he returned inside the burning building to save his accordion. The other band members escaped alive because they were the first to notice the fire.
The fire spread so fast inside the packed club that firefighters and ambulances could do little to stop it, survivor Luana Santos Silva told the Globo TV network.
“There was so much smoke and fire, it was complete panic, and it took a long time for people to get out, there were so many dead,” she said.
Most victims died from smoke inhalation rather than burns. Many of the dead, about equally split between young men and women, were also found in the club’s two bathrooms, where they fled apparently because the blinding smoke caused them to believe the doors were exits.
There were questions about the club’s operating license. Police said it was in the process of being renewed, but it was not clear if it was illegal for the business to be open. A single entrance area about the size of five door spaces was used both as an entrance and an exit.
Family members of those killed walked around the gym in a daze Sunday evening, shuffling between caskets or holding one another and weeping as they identified loved ones and tried to make sense of what had happened.
Elaine Marques Goncalves lost her son Deivis in the fire. Another son who attended the college party at the nightclub, Gustavo, was barely alive after suffering two cardiac arrests caused by smoke inhalation.
She learned of the blaze after the mother of her sons’ friends called her early Sunday.
“My boys were not home and I had no news. I turned on the TV — the tragedy was all over the television,” she said at the makeshift morgue. “All I knew was they had gone to a club, I didn’t know which one. I kept saying: ‘Where do I start? Where do I go?'”
Television images from the city of about 260,000 people showed black smoke billowing out of the nightclub as shirtless young men who attended a university party there joined firefighters using axes and sledgehammers to pound at the hot-pink exterior walls, trying to reach those trapped inside.
Bodies of the dead and injured were strewn in the street and panicked screams filled the air as medics tried to help. There was little to be done; officials said most of those who died were suffocated by smoke within minutes.
Within hours the community gym was a horror scene, with body after body lined up on the floor, partially covered with black plastic as family members identified kin.
Outside the gym police held up personal objects — a black purse, a blue high-heeled shoe — as people seeking information on loved ones crowded around, hoping not to recognize anything being shown them.
The gathering was a party organized by students from several academic departments from the Federal University of Santa Maria. Such organized university parties are common throughout Brazil.
Survivor Michele Pereira told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper that she was near the stage when members of the band lit some sort of flare.
“The band that was onstage began to use flares and, suddenly, they stopped the show and pointed them upward,” she said. “At that point, the ceiling caught fire. It was really weak, but in a matter of seconds it spread.”
Guitarist Rodrigo Martins told Radio Gaucha that the band, Gurizada Fandangueira, started playing at 2:15 a.m. “and we had played around five songs when I looked up and noticed the roof was burning.”
“It might have happened because of the Sputnik, the machine we use to create a luminous effect with sparks. It’s harmless, we never had any trouble with it,” he said. “When the fire started, a guard passed us a fire extinguisher, the singer tried to use it but it wasn’t working.”
He confirmed that accordion player Danilo Jacques, 28, died, while the five other members made it out safely.
Police Maj. Cleberson Braida Bastianello said by telephone that the toll had risen to 233 with the death of a hospitalized victim. He said earlier that the death toll was likely made worse because the nightclub appeared to have just one exit through which patrons could exit.
Federal Health Minister Alexandre Padhilha told a news conference that most of the 117 people treated in hospitals had been poisoned by gases they breathed during the fire. Only a few suffered serious burns, he said.
Most of the dead apparently were asphyxiated, according to Dr. Paulo Afonso Beltrame, a professor at the medical school of the Federal University of Santa Maria who went to the city’s Caridade Hospital to help victims.
“Large amounts of toxic smoke quickly filled the room, and I would say that at least 90 percent of the victims died of asphyxiation,” Beltrame told the AP.
Sunday’s fire appeared to be the worst at a nightclub since December 2000, when a welding accident reportedly set off a fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.
Similar circumstances led to a 2003 nightclub fire that killed 100 people in the United States. Pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling of a Rhode Island music venue.
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Associated Press writers Marco Sibaja in Brasilia and Stan Lehman and Bradley Brooks in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.
Officials say a bus has crashed and fallen into a ravine in the eastern Portuguese city of Castelo Branco, killing 10 people and injuring 33.
National Civil Protection authority spokesman Carlos Guerra says the injured have been taken to hospitals in the cities of Coimbra and Castelo Branco.
Television images showed a large rescue operation mounted on the approach roads Sunday, including more than 260 firefighters and at least one rescue helicopter.
The bus was reportedly traveling from the Spanish city of Badajoz to the tourist destination of Santa Maria da Feira. Civil Protection spokesman Rui Esteves says all the dead were Portuguese citizens.
By Polly Davis DoigA fireworks display in a Brazilian nightclub went horribly awry last night, spawning a fire that police say likely killed upward of 200 people, reports Reuters . Police on the scene at the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria have already removed 159 bodies, and rescuers are still looking for more. “People… Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
Police say a fire in a nightclub in southern Brazil has killed at least 90 people.
Sandro Meinerz, spokesman for the police in the city of Santa Maria, tells local media that the fire broke out at the Kiss club while a band was performing at the club. At least 200 people have been injured.
Police said the cause of the fire is not yet known. Firefighters are still looking for victims.
Police have arrested three people in connection with the fire that killed more than 230 nightclub-goers in 
A fireworks display in a Brazilian nightclub went horribly awry last night, spawning a fire that police say likely killed upward of 200 people, reports Reuters . Police on the scene at the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria have already removed 159 bodies, and rescuers are still looking for more. “People…